A new Part 40 updated 11/6/23

Introduces the employer option to add oral fluid drug testing.

The U.S. Department of Transportation has published regulations overhauling and expanding its regulated employee testing program to include oral fluids drug tests.  Employers will not be able to include oral fluids testing in their regulated drug and alcohol testing program until regulators at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) certify at least two laboratories to process oral fluids samples.  Once the oral fluids testing program is implemented, however, the use of such tests will be mandatory in some cases.

“While oral fluid testing has a shorter window of detection than urine, it demonstrates a higher positivity rate for almost all drugs and more than twice the positivity rate for marijuana,” said Dr Suhash Harwani, Sr. Director of Science for the drug screening, employer solutions business of Quest Diagnostics.